Five Minutes with Succulents and Felt

I have become quite addicted to Etsy, mainly to feed my planner habit (see Instagram @desleyjane_plans). I am always on the lookout for props for my flatlay shots that I do for product photography. I like things like marble, succulents (Pantone’s colour of the year is Greenery), gold, pink, and anything fun and colourful.

So for this week’s RegularRandom I wanted to use this fabulous placemat I recently purchased from The Felting Dorcas on Etsy. Cherylyn makes gorgeous things from these little poms. I call them poms, as in pom poms. They’re gorgeous – I got this little placemat, a garland for my bedroom and some loose poms for styling in flatlays (in my signature shades pink of course!).

Before I show you the photos, let’s recap on what the RegularRandom challenge is! Take an object or a scene and shoot it for 5 minutes. Try not to move the object, instead move yourself! This challenge teaches us about composition, about the field of view and about the depth of field as well. Think about these questions:

how close can you get?

are you able to get that lovely out of focus background by using a wide aperture?

can you focus on a single part or the scene or object as well as the whole thing?

what textures can you see?

can you get under or above the object? (*hint – object placement before you start shooting is quite important here)

take a leaf from Su Leslie‘s #regularrandom post and try editing your photos in different ways to try to focus on particular aspects.

or come up with a very clever way of interacting without interacting as Karen from Pics by Kaz did last week

Note that posting instructions are at the bottom of this post.

To go with the softness of the mat, I wanted a contrasting texture, so I chose this wonderful little succulent with pink flowers and very sharp spikes!

Let the 5 minutes begin!

Felt balls

Pink Flowers

Focus

Cushions

Closing up

Spikes

softness and sharpness

round felt balls

pretty edit

Note the water droplet!

reaching

Placemat

Black and White Edit

Pink Edit

So, confession time, I had to take two more minutes to get this next batch – the light was low and I was struggling to hold my camera steady while bending over. But I really wanted a very soft focus felt mat in the background. Should have used the tripod!!!

Please join us – tag your post #regularrandom and link back to this post to join in!